May 5, 2007
NBCU/News Corp. Video Venture Moving Forward with Ad Model, Name

Earlier today, I wrote about recent news that YouTube would be providing some independent video creators with advertising revenue for the most popular videos on their site.

In the meantime, the service that was at one time being touted as the "YouTube killer" is developing their busines plan farther. News Corporation and NBC-Universal is partnering on the online video distribution site, which plans to launch over the summer. The company is in the process of securing advertisers for the video service.

They spoke at the PaidContent conference in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago, emphasizing that the company will be figuring out exactly which advertising model would be most appropriate for the service. Daisy Whitney with TelevisionWeek writes, "Advertising options under discussion are the length of commercials, the number of commercials per pod and the number of 'chapters' each show's episode will be split into."

NBCU's George Kliavkoff emphasized that the service will be open and responsive to the desires of advertisers as to exactly which model will be developed.

The best news, though, is that the popular press is already shying away from that "YouTube killer" moniker as the service promises to be in the process of coming up with a name. According to Whitney's article, it has been referred to as "new site," but the name will be narrowed down to a few possibilities from branding agencies, with users likely able to choose the final version once the service launches.

I wrote in March, "What the NBC Universal/Fox video site sounds more like is a version of cross-platform distribution, an online venue to watch video. I think that's a great idea, but it doesn't provide direct opposition for YouTube if it's primarily going to be ad-supported full-length video content."

Back in April, I wrote about this naming struggle further after the Google CEO reiterated that the NBCU/News Corp. venture was not a competitor to YouTube. I wrote, "If the media industry looks at YouTube simply as another platform for distribution, they are missing what makes YouTube unique. As a place to watch video on-demand that a user can't get anywhere else, YouTube is only great in its ubiquity, that it's a one-stop shop. Otherwise, though, the video quality isn't great, the copyright issues are taxing, and no long content can be posted in its entirety."